Friday, March 14, 2008

The best thing about having five bloggers is having built-in friends for TV-related gigglefests. Last night was like Gigglefest 2008, people. One of Mae’s friends brought up Lost’s track record of firing/killing off every cast member who gets in trouble with the law and we ran with it.

It’s so true, y’all!

The "DUI Curse" theory applies particularly to those cast members who are involved in drunk driving incidents, but really driving while doing anything illegal is fair game for J.J. Abrams to fire your ass.

During her stay on the Lost set, Michelle Rodriguez was pulled over by Honolulu police many times: once for driving 83 miles per hours in a 55 miles per hour zone, once for driving 90 in a 35, and another time for going 80 in a 50. (Fines totaled $854 for these three incidents.) On December 1 of that year, she was arrested for driving under the influence. She would go on to serve time in jail; though sentenced to 260 days, she actually spent less than 24 hours in jail. Probation violation issues and continued legal troubles have plagued Rodriguez since then.

Her character, Ana-Lucia Cortez, was murdered in “Two for the Road.”

Cynthia Watros was pulled over and arrested for driving under the influence on December 1, 2005, the same night as Rodriguez’s run-in with the Honolulu police—actually, the two arrests were made within 48 15 minutes of each other. (The incidents were unrelated.) She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 hours of counselor, a $370 fine, and was banned from driving for 90 days.

Her character, Libby, was murdered by Michael, mere seconds after Ana-Lucia was gunned down.

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje was arrested in September of 2006 for disobeying a police officer and driving without a license. He spent six hours in jail, but was later cleared of all charges after proving he had a license.

His character, Mr. Eko, was brought down by the smoke monster in “The Cost of Living.”

Daniel Dae Kim was arrested for driving under the influence in Honolulu on October 25, 2007.

His character, Jin-Soo Kwan, appears to be dead in the future—a future that’s not too far off.

While it is certainly true that there are other regulars who’ve met their deaths on Lost without having troubles with the po-po (Maggie Grace, Ian Somerhalder, Kiele Sanchez, Rodrigo Santoro, the dearly missed Dominic Monaghan), it is also true that every cast member who has had an alcohol-related driving mishap has been killed off. What’s more, their on-island deaths correspond time-wise with their arrests. (Compare Watros and Rodriguez, whose arrests AND deaths occurred nearly simultaneously.)

The producers assure us that the so-called “DUI Curse” has nothing to do with the decision to kill off these characters. Still, it’s not hard to postulate that perhaps J.J. Abrams and the gang have an even stricter alcohol policy than my zero-tolerance southern high school did.

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